During Monday night’s The Ed Show, host Ed Schultz took on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich‘s penchant for “vilifying President Obama” with the “coded language” of racism. During the panel segment, Salon’s Joan Walsh summed Gingrich up in easily-deciphered fashion, telling Schultz that “Newt is the face of the politics of resentment and racism and angry white male rage” that led voters to vote against their own economic interests.

Race as an issue is increasingly rearing its head in this year’s Republican primaries, with many now accusing Newt Gingrich of race-baiting by calling President Obama the “food stamp president” and calling for underprivileged children to get jobs as janitors. On tonight’s The Five, the panel discussed the race issue and came to a near unanimous conclusion that Gingrich wasn’t racist. Even Bob Beckel agreed on that one, but explained that his language did sound inflamed with subtle racial cues on occasion.

As we reported yesterday, House Republicans were treated to a special presentation by Rep. Kevin McCarthy during a party meeting to figure out how to sort out the debt ceiling crisis, where members viewed a clip from Ben Affleck‘s The Town in an attempt to unite the party behind John Boehner‘s plan. The response was [...]

Democratic Congressman James Clyburn appeared with Neil Cavuto today to discuss the stalled budget talks in Congress. Clyburn says Democrats are ready to negotiate, but “you can’t negotiate with yourself.” Clyburn insists it’s Congressman Eric Cantor and other Republicans who are walking away, because they wrongly believe President Obama is not focused and serious about working on the debt crisis.

Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher decided to take his own Flip camera earlier today and ask some politicians and commentator the question that has nearly brought down on of their own: Do you fully support the Obama agenda? Check out the video after the jump to see their response. SPOILERS: No one gets slapped.

A few weeks ago, Mediaite reported that Meet the Press has pledged to diversify its panels of guests and commentators. So how are they doing? Well, the show has gone four weeks in a row where African American men were featured on the show. This week’s show will actually go one better: an African American guest and an African American journalist on the roundtable.

“We feel that we’re about to do today something that’s been attempted now for almost 100 years,” House Majority Whip James Clyburn told reporters after what he called an “uplifting” meeting between Congressional Democrats and the president. Though CNN referred to the contents of the meeting as “secret,” one thing’s for sure: Democrats can practically taste health care reform.